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On C-Span tonight Clinton called for freedom of information yet did not call for net neutrality. The irony of her statement just made me sad, with out net neutrality there is no freedom of information because that information is no longer free. It clearly was a potshot at China, and after the drumming at the Coppenhagen Environment Summit it's understandable that the U.S. is trying to maintain dominance.

The annoying part of this little Google/China/US tiff over the internet is that the "censoring" laments are totally co-opting the actual problem that got Google pissed: the coordinated hacking attempt of Google servers by what Google thinks are either Chinese government agents or supported elements. THAT is why Google is considering pulling out. Google is also concerned that one or more of their employees in China may be working for the government.

So underneath it all, Google is concerned about the privacy of their users and espionage of their internal systems technologies.

Turning off the internet filters is just Google's biggest tool to respond with before just turning off the power in their Chinese operations.

China is undergoing the process of learning what it is to be the "center" of the world or even part of the world ... its going to be much harder to play the "interfering with internal affairs" card and expect to get away with it. They're encountering this in almost every part of their economic sectors (food, copyright, quality control, products, consumer concerns, etc).

[...]Professor Niņo Becerra, economist: “The crash I’m predicting is the conclusion of a pre-crisis process that started back in September 2007 when the subprime meltdown broke out. The way things have been done has led to exhaustion; credit, consumption and debt have reached a limit. The stock market has been on the rise for reasons of pure speculation, and because of the money fed to them (sic) for financial restructuring. I believe this ‘flowering’ will last for — maximum — two more months, and then will come the fall.”

Moving away from the U.S. for a bit, this economist Nino Becerra is forecasting the possibility of a severe crash this year. The so-called PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) are already in the news as well - not to mention the U.K. All I could find on him, though, are info in Spanish so no idea on his past accuracy.

VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI has a new commandment for priests struggling to get their message across: Go forth and blog.

The pope, whose own presence on the Web has heavily grown in recent years, urged priests on Saturday to use all multimedia tools at their disposal to preach the Gospel and engage in dialogue with people of other religions and cultures.

Oh, good grief.

__________________

"If ignorance is bliss, then why aren't more people happy?" -- Misc.

Currently listening: Nadda
Currently reading: Procrastination for the win!
Currently playing: "Quest of D", "Border Break" and "Gundam Senjou no Kizuna".
Waiting for: "Shining Force Cross"!

It's a good idea to reach those who are in a location that doesn't have a place of worship. Other than that reason, those who are not interested or already have a religion of their own I doubt would care about religion blogging even if they're changing with the times. The other religions could do the same thing if they wanted.

The annoying part of this little Google/China/US tiff over the internet is that the "censoring" laments are totally co-opting the actual problem that got Google pissed: the coordinated hacking attempt of Google servers by what Google thinks are either Chinese government agents or supported elements. THAT is why Google is considering pulling out. Google is also concerned that one or more of their employees in China may be working for the government.

So underneath it all, Google is concerned about the privacy of their users and espionage of their internal systems technologies.

Turning off the internet filters is just Google's biggest tool to respond with before just turning off the power in their Chinese operations.

China is undergoing the process of learning what it is to be the "center" of the world or even part of the world ... its going to be much harder to play the "interfering with internal affairs" card and expect to get away with it. They're encountering this in almost every part of their economic sectors (food, copyright, quality control, products, consumer concerns, etc).

That might be true, but remember here that for every popular site in the West, China has its equivalent, which is more well received in China and far more willing to cooperate with China government.

That might be true, but remember here that for every popular site in the West, China has its equivalent, which is more well received in China and far more willing to cooperate with China government.

Google? Baidu.
Youtube? Youku.
Ebay? Taobao.
Yahoo? Alibaba.

Google really has met its match.

Not really, Baidu does not equal Google. Baidu is a search engine and not much more, Google is the worlds largest information broker. With their pushing forward of cloud it is positing itself to be far bigger in those terms. Unless the US government mess with their plans they will more then likely be one of the most influential companies on the planet.

That might be true, but remember here that for every popular site in the West, China has its equivalent, which is more well received in China and far more willing to cooperate with China government.

Google? Baidu.
Youtube? Youku.
Ebay? Taobao.
Yahoo? Alibaba.

Google really has met its match.

This is true to some extent... but that's just supporting my point... that's not "participating in the world" but walling oneself off again. Now if those tools DISPLACED the tools the world uses.... then that would be the result of competition and participating in the world.

Not really, Baidu does not equal Google. Baidu is a search engine and not much more, Google is the worlds largest information broker. With their pushing forward of cloud it is positing itself to be far bigger in those terms. Unless the US government mess with their plans they will more then likely be one of the most influential companies on the planet.

Google initially started out as a search engine as well, if I am not mistaken - although I haven't drank its cool-aid to be 100% up to speed on its history. Anti-trust laws and regulations will not allow Google to dominate too much, though; the amount of synergy it will be able to get - assuming that it does more to move its "products" out of beta faster - from going into different areas won't be too high versus the past's companies. It'll likely be more like MS and its X-Box product (at least in the beginning) for awhile. Google's dominance is... airy as well, IMHO.

Nationalism and obedience (or lip service) to rules will get the Chinese equivalents seats at the table - at least inside of China - however. Depending on how much they can move away could mean their staying a success. I haven't heard of stories of many out-and-out rebels in the tech space there... but if someone has, feel free to correct. China isn't - and won't for awhile, IMHO - going to just stop promoting its own companies to get ahead of the curve.

__________________

"If ignorance is bliss, then why aren't more people happy?" -- Misc.

Currently listening: Nadda
Currently reading: Procrastination for the win!
Currently playing: "Quest of D", "Border Break" and "Gundam Senjou no Kizuna".
Waiting for: "Shining Force Cross"!

This article made me goddamn snarl. As in, showing my teeth and making a noise that indicated I wanted to rip someone's throat out. Most sickening part:Ten days ago, Phoebe was walking home from school when one of the Mean Girls drove by in a car. An insult and an energy drink can came flying out the car window in Phoebe’s direction.

Phoebe kept walking, past the abuse, past the can, past the white picket fence, into her house. Then she walked into a closet and hanged herself. Her 12-year-old sister found her.

You would think this would give the bullies who hounded Phoebe some pause. Instead, they went on Facebook and mocked her in death.

They told State Police detectives they did nothing wrong, had nothing to do with Phoebe killing herself.

And then they went right back to school and started badmouthing Phoebe.

I was bullied myself in school, but not to THIS degree. I mean, they mocked a girl who committed suicide because they bullied her.

High school girls are quite possibly the most vile, repugnant, horrible, vitriolic life-form in existence. Conquerors and tyrants that have etched their names in history with the blood of their victims can't compare...

God I hate kids so much. >.>;

Edit: The school administrators ought to lose their jobs for this, and the parents of these girls ought to lose custody. Stupid leftist handwringing has school officials too terrified to actually punish anyone for being moronic. I would never have behaved like this; my parents would have beat the holy hell out of me.

No discipline anymore, shit. I bet these girls probably never even got so much as a time-out when they did something wrong. And I bet their parents are denying the whole thing, "not my baby, never!" If I would have pulled a stunt like that, my parents would have drove my ass to juvie and told the cops to lock me up.

3 years of junior high school, 2 out of 4 years in public high school. I've had it bad myself, but nowhere as serious that I would resort to ending my life. Maybe I lucked out since the internet was not out yet or it would have been far worse for me. School work may have been important back then, but a very close second was survival.

Edit: The school administrators ought to lose their jobs for this, and the parents of these girls ought to lose custody. Stupid leftist handwringing has school officials too terrified to actually punish anyone for being moronic. I would never have behaved like this; my parents would have beat the holy hell out of me.

It is amazing how coddled some of these kids are, yes. Where I grew up if you pulled crap like that and got the media turning a negative eye on the neighborhood, you'd get taken by a mafioso walking home from school one day and the next time your parents saw you, you'd be in a bag and the news sure as hell wasn't going to talk about it.

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No discipline anymore, shit. I bet these girls probably never even got so much as a time-out when they did something wrong. And I bet their parents are denying the whole thing, "not my baby, never!" If I would have pulled a stunt like that, my parents would have drove my ass to juvie and told the cops to lock me up.

I think I'd place the blame on the parents mainly, myself. If a kid catches hell at school but their parents give them an out, then they generally take to ignoring the teacher's reprimands and feeling sure in themselves that they're beyond reproach. It all starts with the parents. Hell, just two weeks ago I was out for a jog and this Escalade rolls up alongside the sidewalk I was running on and this kid, maybe ten or so, sticks his head out the window, spits at me and yells something with his mother sitting right there, and she literally did not do a thing. I said "Hey, lady, you see what your kid's doing?" and she got all bent out of shape and told me not to talk trash about her child.

A long time ago I was bullied as well (around age 8-10), but that stopped when I hit puberty and turned into the gym rat I am today. So in my experience just becoming bigger and stronger than the bullies turned the tables but I suspect for high school girls there is a different dynamic at work. Male bravado is real but it seems like young girls care entirely about social connections so they don't have the option to 'upgrade' as easily. It's truly unfortunate but as long as we continue lumping massive groups of young, immature kids in buildings all day together it probably isn't going to stop.

Stupid children are the product of stupid parents. Its a natural thing. No matter how "innocent" a child may be when they are born or try to live their lives, they are eternally shaped by their parents.

A lack of discipline, a lack of respect, a lack of understanding are all products of irresponsible parenting. Parents need to be more proactive when raising their kids, right and wrong is something which needs to be instilled into children at an early age.

IMO, alot of parents think they cannot be bothered to take responsibility for their children. I think it has alot to do with culture and the parent's own initiative. When I was good bit younger, I found the administration in school much more lenient to me when I got into fights, however real hell was at home. My father would not let me do stupid things without knowing that there were consequences.

Parents nowadays are afraid of kicking the shit out of their kids nowadays. Perhaps they're misinformed, perhaps they're afraid. But at some point a child needs to know what's wrong and WHY.

I think the fact that nothing was happening to stop this stupidity (Didn't she ever told a teach about this atrocious behaviour?) is the most sickening part. Why didn't anyone do anything?

I think the fact that nothing was happening to stop this stupidity (Didn't she ever told a teach about this atrocious behaviour?) is the most sickening part. Why didn't anyone do anything?

The issue here, from what I've seen, is actually a terribly ironic one. The same authority figures who are afraid to discipline someone for being a huge tool will turn around and generally tell the kids being tooled upon to ignore it. Sure, in an ideal world every kid could just shrug off the bullshit they receive unjustly, but we're not in an ideal world. The fact that there is unjust bullshit should make that clear, and the authority figure's in a child's life have the responsibility to lay down the law if there's a problem. By refusing to punish douchebag kids and telling the victims that they ought to ignore it, the victimized kids receive the double-whammy message that their authority figures don't give a damn about them. So, even if she did tell people about the bullying, odds are she was soundly dismissed or told to walk it off.

Unfortunately, schools and their staff care more about their image as a safe, healthy environment than they actually care about providing said environment, so nothing is done because it's far easier to sweep problems under the rug than it is to solve them.

Articles like that make me sick. Not because of the content, but just because of their insipid attempts to appeal to emotion. I hate "news" like that.

Plus, I can't really feel sorry for people who kill themselves over nonsense like this. Does it suck to get bullied? As a guy who is 5'10 and roughly 110lbs, yeah, I can say from experience that it does indeed suck. At the same time, though, if you feel like things are really so messed up it's not worth living, then you may as well try to kill the people messing with you, since you're convinced you already have nothing to lose. That's about what I did. Except the abusive jerk in my case wasn't even just some random idiot at school, it was my older brother. Even with that sort of "attachment" I didn't really have any trouble strangling him one day and telling him that if he didn't back off, I was gonna knife him. He moved out not long after that, and I haven't seen him in six years. My mother still never believes that anything like that could have happened, though, because after all, he was so perfect. She is completely unwilling to accept my accounts as anything other than "things I dreamed" or "I was just taking things too seriously."

Now, that was someone who, at the time, outweighed me by about 100lbs and was five years older. I don't think these many of these highschool kids really have such a big strength / size gap between them, so it shouldn't really be that big a deal. If someone won't lay off, and nobody listens to you, then bash someone's teeth in. If you can't win in a fair fight that way, then make it unfair. I can't sympathize with people who aren't willing to stand up for themselves as best as they can.

The issue here, from what I've seen, is actually a terribly ironic one. The same authority figures who are afraid to discipline someone for being a huge tool will turn around and generally tell the kids being tooled upon to ignore it. Sure, in an ideal world every kid could just shrug off the bullshit they receive unjustly, but we're not in an ideal world. The fact that there is unjust bullshit should make that clear, and the authority figure's in a child's life have the responsibility to lay down the law if there's a problem. By refusing to punish douchebag kids and telling the victims that they ought to ignore it, the victimized kids receive the double-whammy message that their authority figures don't give a damn about them. So, even if she did tell people about the bullying, odds are she was soundly dismissed or told to walk it off.

Unfortunately, schools and their staff care more about their image as a safe, healthy environment than they actually care about providing said environment, so nothing is done because it's far easier to sweep problems under the rug than it is to solve them.

Articles like that make me sick. Not because of the content, but just because of their insipid attempts to appeal to emotion. I hate "news" like that.

Plus, I can't really feel sorry for people who kill themselves over nonsense like this. Does it suck to get bullied? As a guy who is 5'10 and roughly 110lbs, yeah, I can say from experience that it does indeed suck. At the same time, though, if you feel like things are really so messed up it's not worth living, then you may as well try to kill the people messing with you, since you're convinced you already have nothing to lose. That's about what I did. Except the abusive jerk in my case wasn't even just some random idiot at school, it was my older brother. Even with that sort of "attachment" I didn't really have any trouble strangling him one day and telling him that if he didn't back off, I was gonna knife him. He moved out not long after that, and I haven't seen him in six years. My mother still never believes that anything like that could have happened, though, because after all, he was so perfect. She is completely unwilling to accept my accounts as anything other than "things I dreamed" or "I was just taking things too seriously."

Now, that was someone who, at the time, outweighed me by about 100lbs and was five years older. I don't think these many of these highschool kids really have such a big strength / size gap between them, so it shouldn't really be that big a deal. If someone won't lay off, and nobody listens to you, then bash someone's teeth in. If you can't win in a fair fight that way, then make it unfair. I can't sympathize with people who aren't willing to stand up for themselves as best as they can.

It's one thing to stand up for yourself, it's another to reduce yourself to the tormentor's level or go below it to do so. How do you think the bullying starts in the first place? Encouragement of violence and cruelty as a means of sorting out life. To get violent on someone as retribution is just feeding the whole cycle and setting yourself up to become the douchebag bully yourself.

I definitely believe in standing up for yourself, and some tough love really helps, but it needs to be done in properly or you just become an animal. The problem here is that you've got so-called authority figures who are making that difficult. Fine, if the people around you won't do anything about it, get an outsider involved. Predation only goes on so long as there is nobody in the situational 'food chain' above the predator willing to do anything about it.

Over in Bermuda where my sister lives and teaches, a popular practice for disciplinary issues is to bring in a third party, an authority figure in one or all of the involved parties' lives, who has no stock in the image of what's going on to sort things out. You get kids who were beating up other kids getting chewed out by their martial arts instructor or their sports coach or something, and you would not believe how chastened the kid is by that.

One further cautionary note: what I say about predation only lasting as long as there's not a bigger predator around? That applies to the broader social context of your neighborhood, too. You might have gotten away with beating your brother down, but go ahead and try that in the inner city on the kind of kid who goes around being a bastard for the kicks. You'll have some guy you don't know shoving a .45 up your ass faster than you'd imagine.

South Hadley is a nice, comfortable middle-class suburb that hugs the Connecticut River nearby and a certain attitude.

“Things like this aren’t supposed to happen in South Hadley,’’ said Darby O’Brien, a high school parent, wondering why the bullies who tormented Phoebe are still in school. “And so instead of confronting the evil among us, the reality that there are bullies roaming the corridors at South Hadley High, people are blaming the victim, looking for excuses why a 15-year-old girl would do this. People are in denial.’’

Except that Columbine wasn't a result of negligence or denial per se, but rather culture. The parents and the authorities were aware of the bullying, but all of them dismissed it as "boys will be boys", especially with the clean-cut all-star athletes the bullies were, as was revealed later in an interview with other kids who knew the bullied victims (shooters) personally and witnessed the bullying. On the other hand if the Rammstein-fan, gothic clothed shooters were the ones doing the bullying, you can bet they'd be instantly suspended from school.

In this case, like most, I'm not sure if doing anything now would really make them change. They may be afraid of bullying, but they'll still feel the desire and would probably do so at some opportunity again. Ideally, the whole environment growing up should be so that they wouldn't want to bully in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Neat Hedgehog

Articles like that make me sick. Not because of the content, but just because of their insipid attempts to appeal to emotion. I hate "news" like that.

Plus, I can't really feel sorry for people who kill themselves over nonsense like this. Does it suck to get bullied? As a guy who is 5'10 and roughly 110lbs, yeah, I can say from experience that it does indeed suck. At the same time, though, if you feel like things are really so messed up it's not worth living, then you may as well try to kill the people messing with you, since you're convinced you already have nothing to lose. That's about what I did. Except the abusive jerk in my case wasn't even just some random idiot at school, it was my older brother. Even with that sort of "attachment" I didn't really have any trouble strangling him one day and telling him that if he didn't back off, I was gonna knife him. He moved out not long after that, and I haven't seen him in six years. My mother still never believes that anything like that could have happened, though, because after all, he was so perfect. She is completely unwilling to accept my accounts as anything other than "things I dreamed" or "I was just taking things too seriously."

Now, that was someone who, at the time, outweighed me by about 100lbs and was five years older. I don't think these many of these highschool kids really have such a big strength / size gap between them, so it shouldn't really be that big a deal. If someone won't lay off, and nobody listens to you, then bash someone's teeth in. If you can't win in a fair fight that way, then make it unfair. I can't sympathize with people who aren't willing to stand up for themselves as best as they can.

Her tragedy saddens me and the bullies angers me, but I partly agree with you.

However the acceptance of bullied victims to fight back will most likely never be allowed, even though I think it should be. In this case, it's a catch-22 though: people ignore the bullying, so she looses; if she fights back, she'll be the one who gets in trouble (and perhaps lots of trouble), so she still loses.

Personally, I'd prefer it if the you-reap-what-you-sow approach were allowed.

However the acceptance of bullied victims to fight back will most likely never be allowed, even though I think it should be. In this case, it's a catch-22 though: people ignored the bullying, so she looses; if she fights back, she'll be the one who gets in trouble (and perhaps lots of trouble), so she still loses.

Personally, I'd prefer it if the you-reap-what-you-sow approach were allowed.

Again, this is a dangerous approach to take, because this only works in environments where a little beating is the worst it can get. In harsher environments violence can and will escalate beyond that level very quickly if that's the path you take, and then some kid(s) end up lying dead on the basketball court with a bullet wound.

No offense, but it sounds like both you and Neat came from neighborhoods on the more peaceful side of the spectrum. I'd strongly encourage anyone that fortunate to preserve the peace as best as they can and find some way other than 'an eye for an eye'.

If you think fighting back is going to work your damn wrong, because after you overcome one bully there will be another waiting, there will always be someone with more power or more money able to manipulate you in away you don't want to. It's a societal problem where we devalue everything that doesn't feed our ego, and bullying fits perfectly into the me first society that America has developed into.